Bedtime Stories

It's the summer of all summers; the last I have to spend cooped up in the house I had grew up in, surrounded by the love, warmth, and security I obtain from my father's presence alone. The air outside has a slight chill to it. A gentle breeze hits beneath the trees at the bottom of the garden, the sound of wind chimes clashing against the gust dances inside my eardrums. I welcome it; the peaceful tune reminds me of hot days spend outback with the comfort of my family; Dad and Alex. With only eighteen months between the ages of myself and my older sister, back then, we were the best of friends. We did everything together. My fondest memory of our childhood was on her sixth birthday.



It was the first without Mum; we thought we wouldn't cope. A party was held at the local community centre. Alex - being Alex - had insisted on a simple occasion; she was just as demanding then as she is now, more than ten years later. That day was so vivid to me yet it is still fresh in my mind. It wasn't the daytime that was significant; it was the night. The party came and went. My sister and her friends had a whale of a time. Dad looked on - proud. We seemed happy but only he knew we weren't. Our icy exterior simply melted away once the guests had returned home. Without the noise of laughter and childish banter, we had time to think. There was a hole in the room almost as large as the hole we now had in our life's. Hearts ached, tears were shed. All I wanted was my Mum to comfort me.

That night, Dad sent us to bed early. Bewildered, Alex and I simply followed his request, eager to know what all the fuss was about. We changed into our pyjamas, pink to make the boys wink as Dad had always said, and settled ourselves down in bed. We were typical young girls my sister and I. We played with barbie dolls, we thought boys were icky, our favourite colour - as our bedroom walls suggested - was pink. The only sound I could hear in the room was the gentle noise of my sister's steady breathing. I turned onto my side in bed to view Alex's profile. Her blonde halo of hair cascaded down the length of her back in neat ringlets, her pea green eyes shimmered in the moonlight that had crept up on us through the gaps in the drawn curtains. Our appearances were never alike. My auburn locks hung straight, down to my shoulders, flicking annoyingly at the ends. My chocolate brown eyes stood out in a crowded room, swirls of black highlighting them, causing them to become visible in even the darkest of places. We were polar opposites.

For the first ten minutes we just lay there in our room, soaking up the silence, neither feeling the need to speak; our thoughts were more than enough to deal with at the moment. I was only five years old and the world seemed like a scary place. My mummy had been taken away from me, I was given no explanation. I just didn't understand how things could change so drastically and I think Dad realised this too.

"I'm sorry for the delay!" he announced abruptly as he arrived in our bedroom, his face breathless, red with exhaustion.

He was met by a wall of silence. Both me and my sister gave him a faint smile and as he looked down on us with sorrow, my eyes drawn down to the large, brown book he held in his arms close to his chest. He cradled it as if it were a baby, the crown jewels, something precious that he had a special place in his heart for. I could tell, even then, how much this book meant to him.

"I've got something I think you two might like."

Sitting upright, I grinned sheepishly at my father as he propped himself down on the edge of Alex's bed, studying the face of his eldest daughter before reaching out to skim his hand against her cheek, hoping this would be a comfort to her saddened state.

"We'll get through this," he told us receiving a timid nod of each of his daughters. "It's just us from now on, but I promise that we'll get by. Okay?"

"Daddy?" I remember saying quietly, dismissing his last comment with one of my own laced with fear and uncertainty. "When's mummy coming back?"

He swallowed. Hard. I could tell he'd been avoiding that question all day but now it was time for him to wing it. He could barely tell us the truth - "Girls, your mother isn't coming back. She's in prison for three years after committing bigamy." We wouldn't understand the half of it and besides, what average five year old has a mother locked behind bars in prison? It was such an unnatural situation for any of us to be in, it was beyond any of our controls. It was hardly our fault.

"Mummy's gone away for a while," Dad explained; it wasn't a lie but he was hardly telling us the truth. Both Alex and I knew this but decided not to question against it. This was hard enough as it was without added complications from a curious child.

"Will she ever come back?"

"Maybe."

He was welling up. I could tell. His voice had gone tight as if he was being strangled by the harsh truth of reality. If I'd have known back then just how much this was killing him, I would've strode out of that bed and hugged him 'til the pain subsided. But I didn't. I was too young, too naïve, too oblivious. I didn't suspect a thing.

"What's that in your hand?" I questioned expectantly, referring to the book still held within his grasp.

"This..." Dad rested the book on his lap and wiped a hand across the brown cover, a thick shield of dust dropping to the floor as he did so. It was obvious that this book hadn't been opened in quite a while. I was hopeful that it would contain the wisdom we needed in order to carry on with our lives as normal without Mum by our side. Both Alex and myself opened our mouths in awe, observing the mysterious book. "... this is a book I put together myself a couple of years back now. It's got stories in it. Bedtime stories like the ones Mummy sometimes reads to you."

"Like Winnie the Pooh and The Gruffalo?" asked Alex, her brow creased slightly in confusion.

"Yes, exactly like Winnie the Pooh and The Gruffalo," Dad chuckled. "Only different... I wrote these stories myself."

Alex gasped with excitement. "Like an authorer?"

Rolling my eyes at my sister's inability to pronounce what I thought was a smile word, I sighed. Alex may have been the oldest but I was by the far the most clever.

"Like an author..." I corrected with a smirk. If I was Alex, I would've made sure I'd have been slapped by now.

"Yes."

"Wow!"

It was clear that Alex was more than impressed. I was too but never one to show my emotions, I kept it to myself as a surge of excitement silently progressed it's way around my body. I was intrigued.

"Are you going to read it to us?" I pestered only to receive a firm nod and an affectionate smile from my father.

"Of course," he replied. "Now, is everyone tucked in?"

Eagerly, both me and my sister nestled back down into our beds; heads hits pillows, bodies scrunched up tight beneath the duvets. We smiled up at Dad as he hesitantly opened the mysterious book to the first page. It revealed a surprisingly crisp white page filled with my Dad's scrawly font - his unique handwriting as he used to put it. I don't know how he managed to be a teacher for twenty odd years if he marked books with that scribble.

We waited on baited breath as Dad opened his mouth to read aloud, his eyes fixed firmly onto the page. I never could understand his handwriting and due to the amount of concentration he was giving to the page, I doubt he ever could too at a first glance.

"Once upon a time..." he began. Dad had his storytelling voice on, the voice that had always enchanted me. I focused solely on him and the words he was saying. The rest of the world simply disappeared as I entered my own world full of imagination and possibilities. "Once upon a time there lived a women; the most beautiful women in the whole of the land. She wasn't perfect. Nobody is. But she was the closest thing to perfection anyone had ever laid eyes on. Her selflessness inspired a generation. A day in her presence was always worthwhile. She went from rags to riches; from weakness to strength. Her life before the castle was dark and gloomy. Witches cast spells on her; evil consumed her every last thought. The castle changed her. It changed her for the better. Rachel was the women everybody hated to love and loved to hate. But her smile, beaming with pride from the achievements of those around her, was infectious. She was truly remarkable..."

Within those few lines, I was attached. Rachel - whoever she was, was my new favourite heroin. She would slay dragons, defeat all the bad guys, show strength and determination in every little thing she would do. She represented everything I wanted to be when I was older. Part of me hoped that Dad had based Rachel's character loosely around myself. We were similar. We had the same hair, the same eyes, the same attitude towards life. Rachel was the women every little girl would want to grow up to be. Each night, my sister and I would insist that Dad read us another page from his book. We called it Rachel time. Every story was different, a different genre, a different situation. But one thing never changed. It was always up to Rachel to save the day, and she always would without so much as a second thought. These stories were the highlight of my days back then. They were probably the only way Dad could get us into bed on time but I didn't care, I loved each and every one of those stories individually. Rachel will have a special part in the heart for the rest of my life.



Boxing up my memories, I enter the kitchen to be met by Alex's gloomy face. She's slummed over the breakfast bar staring absentmindedly into her cornflakes as the whirls the spoon against the milk liquid swimming around in the bowl. I roll my eyes at her, brushing past to make my way over to the fridge.

"Cheer up," I encourage. "It might never happen."

In response, I receive an exasperated sigh. Alex looks up at me tiresomely as I open the fridge to retrieve the jug of orange juice I had gone in for.

"It's alright for you, Amelia. You're out of here by September!" she moaned, resting her head against the table in discomfort.

It's true. I start collage up in Sheffield in the new school year. I leave Rochdale, Dad and Alex behind to move into student accommodation. The prospect would be a lot more thrilling if the collage was closer to home. I'm gonna miss the old place, my friends, my family.

"Well, if someone hadn't have got themselves kicked out of Uni, you'd be out of here too!" I remind her.

She gets up and leaves, slamming the door shut in her wake. Alex is now 17 and might as well have the word 'trouble' written on her forehead. Everywhere she goes, all hell brakes loose. She got kicked out of Uni last semester for braking into her lecturers office at three o'clock in the morning along with her boyfriend, Rick, after a night on the tiles. She'd never been so drunk in her whole entire life. Needless to say Dad was less than impressed. Since then, their relationship has become more and more strained. Alex is no longer the sweet and innocent little girl he had brought her up to be. It pains him to see her chuck her life away on some boy. Rick Humphrey is your stereotypical bad boy; tattoos, piercings, dyed jet black hair reaching just above his shoulders. He's rude. His attitude stinks. And he is not the type of person I want my sister to be wasting her time with, but, horrifically, she claims that she's in love. We can't change the way she feels.

I pour myself a drink from the jug of orange juice and take a large gulp. I needed that, Alex has a habit of raising my stress levels dangerously high. I care about her; I don't get why she can't see that. I'd do anything to turn back the clock to when we were little again. We were stuck together back then, but maybe that was because Mum had abandoned us. She went to prison, I'd only lately discovered that. Dad clams up whenever I mention her these days. He won't answer my questions, he won't tell me where she is. She never came back for us; the day she said goodbye, I never knew she meant forever. I haven't seen her since. Good riddance, I say. What kind of mother leaves her children in the sole care of their father for eleven years? No mother of mine does. I don't even register who she is anymore. It's partly her fault Alex is the way she is, I know it. My sister has obviously obtained part of her personality from our mother. Her absence from our life has hit her the most. I just wish none of us had to suffer this way.